


Flashes of Green

by SherlockMalfoy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Death as a concept, Fear, Gen, Horcruxes, One Shot, Personification of Death, Phobia, horcrux, sort of follows canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 12:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16241537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockMalfoy/pseuds/SherlockMalfoy
Summary: Tom Riddle feared only one thing. His own mortality.





	Flashes of Green

 

It had been strange to look up and see the boy rushing into the chamber. The chamber only he could enter.

But Tom knew it wasn't possible. It was only a dream, after all. Visions and Seers were little more than time wasters for the gullible. A way to remove blame for one's own actions and to push aside the consequences as someone else's fault.

So a dream, then, this must be.

The red haired girl lay flat on the cold marble.

He taunts the dream boy.

He knows the name, of course. Because the girl in his dream had told it to him quite clearly. This boy had told it to him on the pages of his diary.

He taunts the boy, watching in mild interest as bright green eyes light up with a burning fire from deep within. He is determined.

And as he slays the millennia old beast with, of all things, the lost Sword of Gryffindor - everyone knew that idiot Dippet kept a replica on the shelf of his office - the boy is stabbed in the arm with a basilisk fang.

Tom had to admit even in his dreams he had a fascination with the macabre. And he supposed that since his mind knew how the venom worked, and the theory behind it, his subconscious imagination had supplied an illustration of the process.

Then, the pain began. A stabbing, burning pain as the boy pulled the fang from his arm and glared hatefully at him. The bright green fire turned upon him as he stabbed the diary over and over, black ink spilling out like so much blood.

Tom Riddle woke in a panic, heart racing as he fumbled for the wand on his nightstand. "Lumos," he whispered, lighting the tip and shining it around the room. To his left Abraxas lay sprawled out awkwardly, having staggered in half-drunk after a private celebration in Hogsmede earlier that evening.

To his immediate right the fat lump Horatio Goyle snored loudly from his bed, hugging his pillow like he hugged his cousin.

Clearly the pillow and the sheets will need to be burnt come morning. Cleaning charms can only do so much.

In the feeble light of his wand, Tom turned to his nightstand and opened the drawer, pulling out his diary. He stroked the leather fondly, feeling the purr of his soul shard inside. Despite being only a dream, it had presented him with a deep concern. He only had the one Horcrux. And it could be easily destroyed. He needed more. He needed to split his soul in such a way, and place the pieces into objects that would be difficult to destroy.

Only then could he escape that which yes, even he the great Voldemort, most feared.

Death.

 

Tom had always been unusually gifted with the Dark Arts. Descended as he was from the great Salazar Slytherin, even if he was a half-blooded bastard, he shouldn't have been surprised.

Mastering the Imperius had been quite easy. And perfecting the Cruciatis had been at the very least rather enjoyable. Especially when he was able to get back at some of the young men who had made his life hell before he discovered his true status as Slytherin's only living heir.

The only curse he had trouble with had been the famed Unforgivable - the Killing Curse. For the Imperius he needed the absolute desire to control everything and everyone around him. Simple. For the Cruciatis all that was needed was the deep desire to cause pain in others, to hate with everything that he had.

But with the Killing Curse... Though he had killed Myrtle, which led to the creation of his diary Horcrux, that had not been something he had control over. The silly bint was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it resulted in her death. Simple as that. But he had commanded the basilisk in the chamber to kill the muggleborns, so ultimately it was his fault. At least enough to allow him to use her death for a Horcrux.

It was not until he had tracked down his father and his father's family that he truly mastered the Killing Curse.

When confusion became realization. Realization became recognition then turned to disgust. That was when he felt it. The cold fingers of murderous intent digging into his heart. The words fell off his lips easily three times. Three deaths on his hands, ripping his soul apart.

One Horcrux became two.

With each kill, the accompanying green flash reminded him of those fiery green eyes from that dream so long ago.

Two became four.

If the boy in his dream had been a metaphor for his own mortality, a personification of Death, then it only made sense that the color of his curse matched the brightness of his determined eyes.

Four became six.

 

One of his youngest Death Eaters brought to him a boon.

A prophecy about a child that could destroy him.

There were two choices presented to him. Two children that fit the requirements told to him.

But it was the name of one that sealed the child's fate.

A half-remembered nightmare of a teenage boy. The panic - the need - to make more. To split his soul further. To stretch it as far as humanly possible to ensure his immortality. To insure that Death could never touch him.

A vague memory of a boy with eyes the color of Death and the name of Potter.

The father had been easy to kill. He was unarmed, which had been quite surprising and unsporting.

The mother though... a mudblood with power. There was no other explanation for the color of her eyes. The color of Death.

She begged him, pleaded with him not to take her son. To take her instead. He had told her to stand aside. She would not. And though her eyes were the color of the curse that struck her down, they did not hold the power or the fire that stared up at him from the cot behind her.

That boy.

That boy would be his Death.

Yes, he had made the right decision to go after this one. Even if it was on a hunch and the nightmare of a 16 year old half-blood bastard.

Those beautiful deadly green eyes were the last thing he saw for a very long time.

 

Death haunted his every step. Dogging him and taunting him. Dangling his own mortality in front of him in an attempt to force him to face it.

First the green fury blazed in the chamber with the stone before Death's touch could burn the body he possessed to cinders.

When his most faithful, though admittedly fearful follower, found him in Albania he had been told how the boy had warned off over a hundred Dementors single handedly. At this, the Dark Lord was indeed impressed. A child mastering such a powerful spell in the first place was unheard of. But then again, the boy was Death. His Death. It stood to reason that he would need to be powerful to bring down one as mighty as Voldemort.

 

The first thing he wanted to see when he stepped out of the cauldron - no longer a spirit or a broken half-formed husk - was those eyes. Those haunting, enchanting, angry eyes. For he had once again defied Death. Had cheated it and proven that this boy, this tool of Death could not destroy him.

 

The prophecy was a problem.

Apparently Severus hadn't told him the whole thing. Hadn't heard the whole thing.

And it wasn't like the Dark Lord could very well pop down to the Department of Mysteries and fetch it himself. No, he would need to lure Potter to do it for him.

 

He felt the destruction of a Horcrux deep in what was left of his soul.

He believed it was the first.

He did not know it was the second.

He did not know his counting would be off.

Voldemort knew of a story. A story in which three men were able to humiliate Death. While humiliating Potter had it's value in pure entertainment, it would do little to help him in his quest for power and true immortality.

No, he needed something that could utterly destroy Potter. A wand that, if the tales were true, could kill Death itself.

Lord Voldemort needed the Elder Wand.

 

The Dark Lord did not scream. He did not whimper. He did not cry out in panic.

Any who claimed otherwise were given the sweet release of a quick death.

For none must know the terror that flooded through him as he slept, watching as the fabled Sword of Gryffindor came down upon the locket of Salazar Slytherin.

Once again, the green eyes of Death watched on as another piece of the greatest wizard of this and any age was destroyed and claimed.

 

The cup was still safe.

The diadem remained lost.

He kept Nagini at his side.

He counted four remaining.

The diary... Like the locket he had dreamed it destroyed. But no, the diary must still remain in safe keeping. He could feel it. Sense it.

 

He raged as the cup was destroyed by the mudblood and the blood traitor deep in the secret chamber only he could enter.

Through his Horcrux, in it's final moments, he could see the rotted meat and the massive skeleton.

But no... No. He still felt them. The remaining three.

The diadem in the room of lost things.

Nagini always at his side.

And the diary. Safely hidden far away from this field of battle.

 

He felt the fire in his veins as through his connection to the Horcrux in the diadem, he watched it consumed in fiendfyre.

Overhead, the green eyes of Death watched on.

Harry Potter circled back to collect Draco Malfoy before escaping the Room of requirement.

Nagini and the Diary remain.

 

He had the wand.

He was uneasy.

This night he had already lost two of his remaining four anchors.

Nagini, if they learned of her true purpose, may or may not survive.

Voldemort's only hope rest with an old battered diary, hidden in the secret cupboards of Malfoy Manor. Far, far away from this terrible place and protected from the war.

Fortunate, then, that it contained half of his entire soul. Certainly a lot more than his body did.

 

Something was.... off...

The Dark Lord paced the clearing in agitation. The Potter boy should be there soon. He had opened the link between them as wide as he could, and yet... he could not discern where he currently was. Could see nothing through that shared link that sisters Fate and Destiny chose to bestow upon them.

He felt a tingling in the back of his thoughts. A whisper.

Death was near.

He could feel it.

Feel it's cold caress, hissing in his thoughts like a long lost lover. He turned again, banishing the whispers - _I am about to die_ \- back to the nothingness where they belonged.

He would not die.

Could not die.

Voldemort turned, hearing a twig snap.

The boy said nothing.

He walked out and stood still. The half giant nearby shouted for the boy to run. To get as far away as he could before Death came to claim him.

"Harry Potter..." he said, his voice almost like a hiss. Angry green eyes watched him. "The boy who lived..."

Oh yes, that was what he wanted to see before he sent the boy to his parents. Before he conquered Death one final time. "Come to die."

If the Dark Lord had been paying more attention he would have realized he had been seeing double when the seductive bright emerald flash filled the clearing, striking the Savior down, he would had realized his greatest mistake.

Instead, he was filled with elation. Joy. Only the Potter boy can kill him and now he is dead at the Dark Lord's feet. Voldemort had won. He had won and defeated Death.

 

It was with a crushing realization that as he saw Nagini's death through her eyes - through her link to him as a Horcrux - that Voldemort learned of his mistake.

All this time he believed the diary to be safe. All those years ago that was no mere nightmare it was a warning. The first time Death came to call on him with those bright, furious green eyes.

Fear.

True fear gripped him as he raised the Elder Wand once more.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" he exclaimed in desperation.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" Death itself raged back.

 

Tom Riddle woke with a cry of panic, blindly searching around for his wand as his eyes adjusted to the light.

"Here," said a voice beside him, and the slender length of Yew was placed in his hand. "Sorry about the light. Can't do a thing with it and I've been trying for a few hundred years. But I do hope you like the location. I picked it with you in mind."

Tom scrambled to his feet, backing away from the ancient Avada green eyes. He glanced at the young mans forehead before back down to his eyes. "You..."

"Hello Tom," Harry said, getting to his feet and and brushing himself off. Then Death smiled at him warmly as if greeting an old friend.


End file.
